My mother didn't call it a sexual violence prevention program, but that's what it was. One winter night she put me on a Greyhound bus bound from Sault Ste. Marie to Sudbury. My dad was scheduled to pick me up at the other end, but she was anxious about the hours in between: me alone on a bus with strangers.

"Sit here," she said, pointing to the front seat. "Stay near the driver and you'll be safe." I don't remember if she asked the man behind the wheel to keep an eye on me. He seemed to understand, instinctively, his role in safeguarding a vulnerable youth.

If human beings, primitive as we are, were the subjects of a nature documentary, any young girl being similarly sheltered might call for a classic bit of David Attenborough narration: "The more experienced female guides her young to the front of the bus where high visibility -- coupled with the older male's watchful eye -- will deter predators."

I was 13 going on 23. As a naive temptress in training pants, there was reason for concern. When it came to keeping me safe, the only tools my mother had at her disposal were the ones she had been given by her mother in the 1960s. To recap, they were as follows:

A skirt can be too tight and too short; showing cleavage is "asking for it" because clothes "send messages"; there's safety in numbers, don't walk home alone; no one will buy the cow if they can get the milk for free; avoid compromising situations (see the hotel rooms, drunken frat parties, bachelor pads, back of the bus, and other compromising locations appendix for complete details); be home by midnight; don't drink too much; beauty is power, use it wisely; and the one I always hated the most but that now just makes me laugh, "You don't need an elephant gun to shoot squirrel!"

By the 1980s, this brand of wisdom seemed old-fashioned and accusatory. Indeed, much of the victim-blaming that has for too many decades hampered our efforts to get at the root causes of sexual violence -- men who are poorly socialized and lack self-control -- was built on the old notions that if a woman was sexually assaulted, it was because she failed to prevent herself from being sexually assaulted.

What I find myself wrestling with these days, particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement, is the role some of this allegedly flawed teaching played in keeping me from becoming a sexual assault statistic.

It's possible that I suffer from too much internalized sexism to perform a truly objective analysis of my life's narrow escapes from men behaving badly. But in spite of having been a reluctant student of my mother's cautionary notes, I see her formidability at play in many of the choices she pressured or quietly nagged me to make, at least some of which kept me safe.

There was the boozy work party she refused to let me attend when I was 16, saying, "Men without their wives and liquor and teenage girls are a bad combination." You don't have to be a strict follower of the Billy Graham rule to know that an ounce of prevention is worth more than its pound of cure.

Then there are the nights I spent in Costa Rica as a single girl in my 20s. Even when my mother was thousands of miles away, her not-so-faint voice managed to whisper me to bed, mostly sober, just around midnight, unperturbed.

And then there was the night on the bus when a dangerous dude with an attitude made his appearance.

This simultaneously creepy and sexy guy -- weird, yes, but true -- was exactly what my mother had imagined when she tucked me in to the front seat of the bus. It didn't take long for him to take up a seat beside me. In due course, he tried to coax me to a "better seat at the back" where we could listen to Elton John on his "Walkman."

It was another David Attenborough moment: "The predator male senses an opportunity to separate the young female from her appointed guardian, but the older male remains vigilant and instructs her to remain in her seat."

I don't honestly know what tools I would use to equip a daughter today, if I had one, to slay this persistent dragon. Oprah Winfrey's moving speech at the Golden Globe Awards alluded to the dawn of a new day, but that may take an awfully long time. What do our young women and girls do in the meantime?

Practical strategies -- not just policies and handbooks -- around preventing sexual assault and harassment must be part of the solution. I think there has to be room to refresh some of the old ideas. Women should have their hackles up for compromising situations, although it's good that we've learned to stand down on the victim-blaming -- no short skirt or low-cut blouse justifies rape.

In and among her '60s spillover stuff, though, my mother ultimately taught me to use personal agency to make strong, smart choices to protect myself. Good luck may have played a part, but her advice was far from rubbish.

Michelle Hauser is a freelance writer who lives in Napanee with her husband, Mark, and their son, Joseph. She can be reached at mhauser@hotmail.ca.